What beer can you get in England/London that you can't get here?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
M

mtnagel

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Apr 15, 2012
Messages
2,562
Reaction score
623
Location
Cincinnati
My gf is in working in England this week and staying in London this weekend. Whenever we travel, we bring some Wine Diapers and bring beer home. What are some beers that you can get there that we can't easily get in the US and specifically OH?

She said there are Brew Dog breweries where she is, but I know we can get some of those here, but maybe not all of them? She also said she saw some Mikkeller, but I know we can get some of that here.

We like pale ales, IPAs and stouts/porters. Any ideas that I can tell her?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Lots.

I'm not going to be a very informed voice in this conversation, but a buddy brought me back a few beers from The Kernel brewery in London that were quite good.
 
My son, who lives in Switzerland, was recently in London for a project, said he was totally surprised to see the market flooded with American suds. He couldn't find a pub serving domestic craft beers where he was staying.
 
I believe that. I've been seeing on travel foodie shows now that a lot of American beers are flooding their market. From BMC's to IPA's. but she should be able to find some bitters & pale ales that are from there.
 
Well, my initial suggestion was going to be a freash pint of hand pulled Fuller's London Pride, but I don't think that will travel well ;) Infinitely better than the bottle stuff.

Craft-wise, Kernel, Partizan and Redchurch would be good reccommendations for specifically London-based breweries (off the top of my head). Kernel and Partizan are really, really good brewers, I don't know Redchurch so well but the couple of beers I've had from them have been decent.
Meantime are pretty big in London now and they make some decent beer.

Other UK brewers you might be able to get:
Magic Rock make some great beer, they're based in Huddersfield in Yorkshire but I'm sure you will be able to buy them in London. Magic 8 Ball black IPA is good. Human Cannonball DIPA too.

Summerwine Brewery are from Yorkshire too, their beer is some of my favourite (except the Barista!). Diablo and Cohort are good but they do a lot of limited ones as well. You'll find their IPAs and DIPAs to be a bit more malt-forwards than many American ones.

Tell her to go to the Euston Tap by Euston Station which is a bar with an off licence so you can buy bottles (sealed) and take them with you. There's probably some other places around but I go through Euston regularly so I go there quite a lot.

Hope that helps!
 
Oh I had a beer from London fields brewery, called shoreditch triangle IPA. That was fairly decent.
 
unionrdr said:
I believe that. I've been seeing on travel foodie shows now that a lot of American beers are flooding their market. From BMC's to IPA's. but she should be able to find some bitters & pale ales that are from there.
Click to expand...

Yes and no, stuff like Bud has been pretty big in the UK for quite a number of years. Miller and Coors aren't really that common, although I've seen them around.

But in the past few years craft beers have started getting trendy, you're right. For example, SNPA has a pretty wide distribution now, I've seen it on tap in a number of places across England. You can get Goose Island in a lot of supermarkets. However this has triggered a lot of home grown craft breweries like the ones I've mentioned above, so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Personally I love the fact that there's some variety from the same old 4% lagers and bitters which used to be ubiquitous :D

Sorry for all the long answers :p
 
yeah,I guess when viewed from your side of the coin,the influx is a good thing. But I think it's another reason CAMRA is getting bigger as well. I do think that they'lll insure that your classics remain available & all that they should be.
 
I was just there on a trip and while this isn't a bottle suggestion but if she likes real ale send her to The Harp in Covent Garden. I went there off a suggestion on this board and it was awesome! :mug:
 
I use Wyeast #1469 West Yorkshire Ale a lot so I'd like to try Timothy Taylor Landlord, which I can't find locally.
 
DubBrew said:
I was just there on a trip and while this isn't a bottle suggestion but if she likes real ale send her to The Harp in Covent Garden. I went there off a suggestion on this board and it was awesome! :mug:
Click to expand...

This. I've been as well, and it's amazing. Dark Star bottles some of their stuff I think, if she can find any I thought everything I tried from them was pretty stellar.
 
Oh I can't believe I didn't mention this yesterday - Thornbridge Jaipur. Absolutely fantastic English IPA, reasonably common in bottles. Drinking one now :D

The other Thornbridge beers are good too.
 
So she bought a couple so far. I know she bought the Brew Dog, one of the Abstrakt series. It is a bourbon barrel aged stout with chili peppers I believe.

She's at a bar/bottle shop now and I think she's thinking about getting either a Mikkeller 10, Beer Hop Breakfast (we have the Beer Geek Breakfast from out trip to CA) or Black Hole. I believe she has room for 6 beers.

There are some great beers, but man they are pricey. $25 for a Southern Tier Creme Brulee stout! That's double what we pay here.
 
Yes, the southern tier will be expensive!

My advice - don't buy US beers to take back to the US!!! You're paying import tax to get it into the UK then taking it straight back... That's why it's so expensive, it's an illogical thing to do!

Alcohol duty in the UK is high anyway, don't compound the issue...

Good shout on the brew dog, tell her to look for Kernel or any of the others I've mentioned though :p
 
Mikkeller are pretty great but look for Evil Twin too.

Sorry, I seem to be brain dumping in this thread...
 
So I was wrong. Got Evil Twin Dookie. Hehe :)

She's going to Kernal tomorrow so will get some then.

Oh she's not buying any US stuff. The annoying part is we can get some Mikkeller, Brew Dog and Evil Twin here, but the selection is always limited and seemingly random, so hard to tell what we can and can't get here, so I hope she's trying to get the more rare stuff, like the Brew Dog Abstrakt.
 
If she's going to Kernel tell her to get the Double Citra, it's really great. I really like the Kernel/Brodies Scanner Darkly black IPA too.

I hear what you're saying about the random selection you guys get - but look on the bright side, that's the situation we're in with every single US craft brewer in the UK!
 
Depends if you know where to go ;)

Lots of places in London do seem to close around 11 to be fair - I live in Manchester, and places seem to be open later here than in London. I'm not sure how much of that is just me knowing where to go in Manchester better though.

The tube runs till 12 or 1 depending on the line.
 
Yeah the US opens later than the UK in my experience.

Depends where you want to go, at the weekends pubs tend to close at 12 or 1, bars at 2 and nightclubs any time till 4.

It's weird how we have worse binge drinking problems than many other countries (US included) yet have stricter licensing laws than pretty much anywhere else I can think of.
 
Here's the haul:

3IvilYb.jpg


I love that one of the Brew Dog's "best before" date is almost 10 years out:

4pjv5EU.jpg
 
Good haul!

I went to university in Durham. The Durham Brewery beers are pretty good.
 
I'd have her look for Cantillon, and bring back a suitcase-full if possible. Really, she could just ditch her clothes and bring back a few extra bottles.
 
Oh course I know they are in the same time zone as I've lived in both states :). I was replying to the post above that reply about bar closing times.
 
mtnagel said:
Oh course I know they are in the same time zone as I've lived in both states :). I was replying to the post above that reply about bar closing times.
Click to expand...

My mistake!

Uh, nothing more to see here.... carry on... :mug:
 
hey all, resurrecting this thread since I'll be heading to London in September... any recommendations on picking up some bottle conditioned beers? Seems like a fun task for me to try and pinch a yeast culture or two when I get back to the states from something I can't find out here. Thanks for all the earlier info here!
 
Visit the meantime brewery. Do the tour, pie and pint night is worth it. I went this past june and it was my favorite tour in all of Europe.

Make sure Alex is working when you go
 

Similar threads

MMP126
Homebrewers Hop Quality
Replies
10
Views
889
ncbrewer
N
Clint Yeastwood
Can you Make a Really Good Lager with Corn?
Replies
15
Views
1K
DuncB
D
TheGC
Soy Sauce beer yeast as Koji?
Replies
6
Views
429
passedpawn
passedpawn
Gadjobrinus
N. England - late hopping guidance, IBU's?
Replies
24
Views
1K
day_trippr
day_trippr
Broken Crow
Snakebite.... Is Nitro the only way?
Replies
2
Views
636
Rish
R

Latest posts

Back
Top